


Dress

by HarperJean



Category: Hanson (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Best Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Musicians, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:24:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarperJean/pseuds/HarperJean
Summary: I don't want you like a best friend, only bought this dress so you could take it off.





	Dress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boomersoonerash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomersoonerash/gifts).



“Okay, I have a whole list. As usual. Um...Okay so...One black coffee, one iced coffee with soy, one iced coffee with almond milk, a skinny vanilla latte, and um...shit what was that last one. It’s smudged. Can you read this?”

I shoved the crumpled piece of paper into the barista’s face, trying to decipher the last item on my list. 

“Looks like a Chai?” 

“Chai! Yes! A chai tea latte please. Thank you!” 

I blew the hair out of my face and straightened my coat before taking my place at the end of the counter to wait for the drinks. I was interning at a studio in the village, and that meant daily coffee runs for the whole team. While I hated being everyone’s gopher, I loved being in the studio all day, watching music being created. 

“Here, Taylor,” the barista said, placing the drinks in trays so that it would be easier for me to walk the few blocks back to the studio. 

“Thanks! I’ll be back tomorrow!” I exclaimed, cheerfully. 

“We’ll be here.” 

I clambered down the street, trying my best not to trip over my clumsy feet on the way. I was all limbs, and no grace, so if I dropped the entire order of drinks all over the sidewalk, it wouldn’t be the first time. I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, but I knew I couldn’t even try to look at it until my arms were unloaded. 

I flitted around the studio, handing the coffees to their respective owners. 

“Thanks Tay,” Greg said, without even looking up at me. "We have some stuff in the office if you want to get started on that.” 

“Stuff? How descriptive.” 

“Paperwork stuff.” 

“Alright,” I sighed. I was used to this by now. As much as I wanted to spend the whole day in the control room, I usually was relegated to the office. 

When I sat down at the messy desk, I took my phone out to see who had tried to interrupt my coffee run. It was a text from my friend, Simone. 

_TAYLOR AND AMELIA BROKE UP._

My stomach flipped and my eyes widened. Simone wouldn’t text me something like that unless she knew it was absolutely true. I immediately went to my Facebook app to check their profiles. Taylor had deleted his.

I combed through twitter and instagram, and found enough evidence that the relationship had ended. I didn’t want to be happy about it. That was stupid, and immature. It was just a stupid crush that I had been harboring for five years, and I knew more than anyone that I needed to let it go. 

Taylor and I met at music camp when we were sixteen which, I’ll admit is pretty cliche. Nothing happened, though. He wasn’t my teenage sexual awakening or even my first kiss. We just played music and looked at each other from across the table. Meeting him felt like a big deal, I do remember that. I’m not sure why something in my stomach flipped when I saw him that first day of camp, as though I was hearing echos from the future telling me that this was a huge moment. Telling me to remember it. As though I could ever forget. 

I hated myself for thinking about him so fondly when I knew how badly he had hurt me not even a year before. I had cried to Simone for hours on end about the death of our friendship, about how badly it hurt to lose him, and how it wasn’t fair that he always chose her over me, the person he claimed to be his best friend. I had gone home from work that day, claiming illness, when really I just couldn’t stop crying in the bathroom over the note he had left on my bedside table. 

_“Please never contact me again. -Tay”_

I decided the only thing I could do was pretend like nothing had changed. I had already grieved this. I had already gone through the entire process of letting him go, since he obviously didn’t want to be in my life. I put my phone back in my pocket and got to work, diving into my tasks for the day, hoping that I was done thinking about it. 

***

It was already dark when I left the studio for the day, a sad truth about New York in December. I shivered in the biting cold, pulling my peacoat tighter around my body as I descended down into the subway station. My fingers were freezing, and I cursed myself for not stuffing gloves into my pockets before heading to work. 

As the 1 train lurched forward, carrying me home, my mind wandered back to Taylor. I tried to stop it, but it was too late. The thoughts were barrelling down the tracks of my brain much like the subway I was on. 

After camp we joked about being best friends and then became them. We didn’t plan it, and it wasn’t very smart of us seeing as though we lived in different cities. But before we knew it, we were talking every day. It’s not like we had deep, philosophical discussions, it was one of us updating the other; what we had for lunch, what song we finished, where we were going that night. It should never have gone farther than that, but of course, it did. He planned a date that he would take me on if we were ever in the same city. It was stupid and corny, but made me laugh. 

This went on for years before we saw each other again, when we both moved to New York around the same time to try and do the whole music thing in the big city. By that time, he had a girlfriend, which didn’t exactly surprise me. What did surprise me was that I didn’t find out from him, but rather from social media, an experience that felt like a swift knife to the stomach. Her name was Amelia. She was short and brunette, two things that I was not. It wasn’t like I could lay claim to him in any sort of way, and I hated myself for how upset I was. But, I decided quickly to get over it. I wanted Taylor in my life, and if that meant being friends with the girl that took something I wanted, so be it. 

It wasn’t long after that when I gave in to my feelings. I was in love with him and I didn’t want to pretend I wasn’t anymore. I was too tired. I took too much effort to pretend like I was okay with the situation when, clearly, I wasn’t. They began fighting, and he began coming to me for comfort. He would knock on my apartment door almost every other night, ranting about how selfish she was. One night he came to me crying, admitting that he had snooped in her things and figured out that she had slept with another man. I wrapped him in my arms and let him cry. 

That night, I let him hold me when he slept over in my bed. I kissed his forehead and he pulled my face towards his before I could pull away. He kissed me deeply, our bodies pressed against each other under my covers. That’s all that happened, but apparently, that was enough. 

The next day he was gone

 

***

_Hey I’m here, are you?_

I looked around the bar, which was a bit too fancy for my studio intern lifestyle, but I figured I could make it work for New Years Eve. I glanced around the room, already noticing that men in suits had turned their gaze away from their dates and were looking me up and down. I smirked quietly to myself, glad to see that the dress I had purchased for the night was doing the job I had intended. It was deep red, with a plunging neckline and delicate straps. I found a shade of lipstick that matched perfectly and let my golden curls fall around my shoulders. 

I saw Taylor near the back. 

Since his break up with Amelia, we, almost instantly, fell back into our routine of constantly texting. Muscle memory is funny, and the heart is a muscle, after all. I tried my best to refrain from answering his texts, but I gave in. He regaled me with apologies, none of which I accepted. I told him bluntly that he had ripped my heart out. 

And yet here I was, meeting him for New Years Eve in a dress I bought specifically so he could take it off of me. 

He saw me and I watched as his eyes followed the dress down my body. I smiled coyly and watched as he flagged down a server to get me a drink. 

“Happy almost New Years,” I said as I took a seat next to him. Our knees immediately grazed each other under the table, causing my heart to skip. 

“You too,” he replied, smiling widely. “It’s good to see you, Taylor.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m an angel and you don’t deserve my friendship but here I am!” 

“You’re right, I don’t. So thanks. You’re my best friend, you know that right?” 

My drink was dropped off and we toasted to our friendship, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. 

We were too many drinks in when the ball dropped, and nothing could stop Taylor from grabbing me and kissing me at midnight, not caring that we were in a public place. 

He leaned towards my ear, and I could feel his breath on my neck. It was warm, but I shivered. 

“Let’s get out of here,” he growled. 

We went back to his apartment, and he fumbled with the door. When we were inside I pushed him down on the bed and climbed on top of him, hiking up my dress and straddling his lap. I cradled his face in my hands and kissed him, uninhibited from the countless gin and tonics I had consumed at the bar. I snaked my fingers through his hair and began to grind on his erection, causing him to moan helplessly. 

He ripped the dress off of my body.


End file.
